


Flu Season: The Ben Wyatt Edition.

by SakuraBlossomStorm



Series: Stories From the Parks Department Floor [2]
Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Game of Thrones - Freeform, Pregnancy, Triplets, flu season, sick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7760932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SakuraBlossomStorm/pseuds/SakuraBlossomStorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben's been living in Pawnee for a while now and has yet to succumb to the annual Pawnee Flu. But his luck has officially run out this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flu Season: The Ben Wyatt Edition.

**Author's Note:**

> Another part of the 'Stories from the Parks Department Floor' collection. I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Comments and Kudos make me happy so feel free to leave them :)

Ben was amazed how long he had been living in Pawnee for and had never once been subjected to the annual flu season they had.

About a month after he moved to Pawnee the flu hit, most of the government at City Hall were affected, he was sure he was going to get it, especially after being in such close contact with Chris and Leslie who both came down with it hard. However he managed to stay completely germ free.

Year after year it hit and people around him came down with this super-flu, however it seemed to avoid Ben like the plague. He was sure that this would be his year to get it, partly because Andy decided to sneeze all over him, but yet nothing.

However, everything changed in one night…and it started with blueberry wine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

‘Well Buddy, I got some good news for ya…’

All of a sudden life took a massive U-turn, next thing Ben knew he and Leslie were having triplets, three babies!! Things were wild for the next month or so, there was the finding out about the babies, then the preparation and finally the day of the Pawnee/Eagleton Unity Concert, Leslie moving jobs to the Midwest division of the National Parks Service and also Ben finally adjusting and gaining the trust of citizens as the new City Manager.

So much had happened that Ben hadn’t given his body the chance to succumb to any type of illness, he had been working relentlessly both in the office and at home, oddly enough his time at home was the toughest. As she was having a high risk pregnancy, Leslie was ordered to take immediate maternity leave, however telling her to do this was like telling the raccoons of Pawnee that time was up and they had to all leave now…It wasn’t going to happen.

They managed to strike a deal where Leslie would work two days a week in the office and three at home, where she was given a strict timetable by Ben which had plenty of breaks scheduled in, he sometimes had to literally force her to go have a nap and trying to get Leslie to stop working and go have a half hour nap was basically training him for when the triplets arrived.

Now, things had calmed down a lot, Leslie was now four months pregnant and had settled into her new role. Her team was working like a well-oiled machine and she couldn’t have been happier.

Ben however, was struggling, after several months of working tirelessly at work and home his body had finally given in and accepted the flu. It was like after Andy had sneezed on him all those months ago the flu just sat inside him, waiting for the right moment to strike, but Ben never gave it a chance, until last weekend when he left work early on Friday to take a long weekend away with Leslie, they banned any talks of work and left it all at home. That was the chink in his armour and gave the flu the chance it needed.

Ben sat at his desk and rubbed his temples, he had a throbbing headache, every time he swallowed it felt like razor blades were cutting up his throat, he couldn’t eat or drink anything without immediately throwing it back up and he was having a war with the temperature in his office, one minute it was too hot, the next too cold.

He couldn’t go home, he had so much to do and plus the thought of taking the time off work to recover with three babies on the way made him start panic sweating. He just had to plough through until 5pm, then he could go home and sleep until tomorrow where he would need to get back up and do it all over again….

Ben had to stop thinking about it; the thought of doing more work was making him feel worse. 

A knock on the door made Ben jumped and plant a hand over his forehead, the smallest amount of noise made him wince in pain.

“Come in” He croaked, assuming it was probably his assistant, instead he was greeted with an unimpressed April Ludgate-Dwyer.

“Ew, what’s wrong with you?” April said, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

“I’m fine” Ben said as he lowered his hands, “Just a cold”.

“You look all sweaty and like you are about to cry, FYI if you do start crying I’m totally going to film you and put it on the government website” April carried on.

“Seriously, April stop” Ben said as he took a deep breath, “What do you need?”

“You to stop infecting City Hall with your man tears”.

“April!”

“Fine” April sighed tossing some papers on his desk, “I need you to sign these papers”.

Ben reached out for his pen but felt only the edge of his desk, he could of sworn that’s where he left his pen, he looked to the other side and nothing, where the hell was his pen? He reached over to check if it was behind the phone on his desk but ended up knocking over a cup of coffee all over the papers April had laid down, Ben immediately swore and tried to dry the papers with his bare hands, scalding them in the process, he gave up and placed his head in his searing hands.

There was a long silence between the two before April finally spoke up, “Yeah so I’m gonna go call Leslie to come get you”.

“No April don’t-.” Ben said as he looked up, too late, April had already vanished from site.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So someone’s not feeling too good”? 

Ben had been in the process of cleaning his desk up and trying to read the documents that April had given him, but trying to read coffee stained paper was turning out to be pretty hard, especially when the letters were bouncing up and down on the page, he hadn’t noticed Leslie walk in until he heard her soft voice, he looked up and saw her looking back at him with a sympathetic stare. 

“I told April not to call you, I didn’t want to worry you” Ben said meekly.

“Well believe it or not she’s worried about you” Leslie said as she walked over to him, “I think… she just said you looked pathetic and needed to go home”.

Ben watched her walk over to him, Leslie looked so beautiful today, she had this amazingly glorious pregnancy glow about her, his eyes travelled down to her round belly, she had started showing pretty early on and now she had this cute bump that was a constant reminder to Ben that he was going to be a Dad.

The thought overwhelmed him so much that he started crying there and then on the spot.

“Ben” Leslie cooed as she perched on the edge of his desk and rubbed his back, “Babe, you’re not well you need to come home”.

“I’m fine” Ben insisted as he wiped his eyes, “I’m just…allergies”.

Leslie rolled her eyes, “Of course, come on get your coat, we’re going”.

Ben gave a slow nod and pushed himself up from his chair, he felt weak all over, his arms were buzzing and his legs felt like they might give out at any moment, finally not eating or drinking anything all day took its effect, Ben’s legs buckled and he landed face down on the couch in his office.

“Ben!” Leslie cried out as she heard the thud, she hurried over and leant down beside him, she rested a hand over his forehead and gasped, “Holy crap your forehead is on fire, Babe we gotta get you to the hospital”.

“I can’t move” Ben whined to her.

Leslie was on the case, she whipped out her phone and called Andy up, he was there in an instant and Leslie asked him to help get them to the car. Ben did not appreciate this, especially when Andy lifted him up bridal style and carried him through City Hall like that, with every member of government they passed Ben could feel them losing respect for him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ben was diagnosed with the flu at the hospital; he was so dehydrated they needed to keep him in for at least a night to pump some fluids back into him. 

He was miserable, he had been force fed an onslaught of medication which he immediately puked back up so had to re-take them all. Now he lay in the hospital bed, his head sunk deep into the pillows wondering how the hell he ended up here.

Leslie had been with him for several hours now and refused to leave his side despite visiting hours being well over, she played the ‘emotionally distraught pregnant woman’ card and the nurses gave in. 

They could have been at home right now and snuggled on the sofa, instead he was lying in an itchy hospital bed with a stupid amount of medication buzzing around his head, he looked to the side and saw Leslie shifting uncomfortably in the plastic chair next to the bed, Ben felt so guilty.

“Leslie, go home. I’ll be fine here for the night,” Ben said to her.

“No way” Leslie said alarmed, “I am not leaving you for a second, you could have died today”.

Ben smirked, “I didn’t almost die, I’ve got the flu, I’ll be better in a few days”.

“…You still could have died” Leslie insisted.

Ben shifted himself so he could look at her, “Babe, go home. Have a warm bath and go to bed, you can come back in the morning and hopefully I’ll be ready to go”.

Leslie pushed herself out of the chair with great effort and sat on the side of the bed, “Do you not want me here?”

“No of course I do” Ben said as he reached out for her hand, “But it’s not fair on you, you’re pregnant and I don’t want you sat here when you could be at home resting. You’ve had a stressful day and that’s kind of my fault, the least I could do to make up for it is to send you home, get takeout and you can take up as much space as you want in the bed tonight”.

“But I don’t want the bed to myself I want you” Leslie whimpered as she rested her head on his shoulder.

Ben gave her a peck on the top of her head, “It’s for one night, I promise as soon as I am back at home I will get you JJ’s waffles, but you’ve got to go home, ok?”

Leslie sighed and climbed off the bed, “Ok…but I’m calling everyone we know to come and do hourly shifts to watch over you”.

Ben was too weak to argue, “Fine” he said as Leslie gave him a kiss and walked towards the door. She hovered in the doorway for a second and turned back to him, “I love you so much” She murmured.

“I love you too” He replied as a small smile crept on his face, the first time he had smiled today. “You know you look really pretty today”.

“Yeah?” Leslie said, blushing.

Ben nodded, “Go on get out of here, I’ll wait for my next caretaker”.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He wasn’t sure what time it was before he finally drifted off to sleep but thanks to the medication it basically knocked him out for the night and also provided some very bizarre dreams. The most vivid was a ‘Game of Thrones’ dream where Ben was hiding in the Godswood from Daenerys Targaryen who had set her dragons on him; he could feel their fiery breath a mile off. He tried to run but Ned Stark’s severed head blocked his path and told him he had to go to beyond the wall to find the answer, then they got into an argument about whether Jon Snow was actually his son or not. Ben had completely forgot about the three dragons who were hot on his tail, he spun around to come face to face with the fanged beasts, the heat intensified and sweat poured down his face…

Ben jolted awake to see Leslie standing over him wiping his face with a towel, it took him a while to register that he was no longer in the fantasy world of Westeros but back in his hospital room.

“Les?” Ben voice’s cracked as his spoke; he rubbed his bleary eyes trying to get a clear view of the sight in front of him.

“Hey, I’m sorry did I wake you?” She asked as she perched beside him and helped him sit up.

“No…it’s fine, I was having some strange dreams though” He said still wary of any dragons that might come bursting in.

“Yeah you were making your cute nightmare noises, then you started sweating like crazy” Leslie said as she reached out for his hand, Ben accepted this and placed his hand on top of hers.

“When did you get back?” He asked.

Leslie paused for a moment, “About two hours ago I think, apparently you’ve been out since we spoke yesterday, I was getting updates last night and lots of photos which were pretty cute”.

Ben scowled, “Photos of what?”

Leslie smirked, “Oh I asked the guys to take photos of you so that I knew you were ok” She pulled out her phone and begun swiping through several photos of Ben sleeping.

“Donna took this one… and Tom took this one, but you can’t tell its him because he’s wearing his germ-free helmet, he didn’t want to get sick. Larry tried to take a photo but he just sent me a picture of his hand”.

“This is really creepy…but so sweet you were worried about me” Ben said with a small smile as he carried on flicking through the photos, until one came up of him with drawn on penises all over his face, April and Andy were in the background holding up sharpies and looking very pleased with themselves.

“Yeah I probably shouldn’t have asked them to help out, they took the early morning shift, I made them clean you off before they left” Leslie admitted.

“Well it’s the thought that counts I guess” Ben shrugged.

Leslie stood up and walked around to the front of the bed, “Right, so I managed to twist your doctor’s arm and you are being discharged into my care, so when you feel up to it, get yourself ready and we’ll go home”.

Ben didn’t have to be told twice, he threw the blankets on the floor and leapt out of bed to grab the change of clothes Leslie brought him, completely forgetting about his hospital gown that exposed his behind.

Leslie gnawed at her bottom lip, “And there’s that butt” She giggled as Ben tried to save his modesty and pull the gown around.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They arrived home in the afternoon, Leslie ordered Ben straight to bed and put the TV on for him to watch re-runs of ‘Fringe’. This was so much better than being at the hospital; here he had the comfort of his bed and best of all Leslie looking after him.

She was incredibly doting and managed to get the time off to make sure she looked after Ben and he made sure that she wasn’t tiring herself out too much. Leslie was amazing to do this for him, but he did worry that she would tire herself out. He had this horrible fear that in a few weeks they would be back at the hospital but instead of him sick it would be Leslie having to be looked after due to exhaustion or something.

He was meant to be the one taking care of her every need during this time, she was carrying three babies, their three babies, he had been there for every bout of morning sickness and rubbed her feet whenever they hurt. But this week he felt so pathetic that he couldn’t take care of his wife.

Leslie walked into the room with a tray in her hands, bringing Ben out of his thoughts; she was beaming and placed the tray in front of him.

“Guess what I made,” She said proudly, Ben recognised the smell straight away, it reminded him of Minnesota and ‘The Price is Right’.

“No way” He gasped as he looked down at the chicken soup Leslie placed in front of him, “How did you do this? My Mom is super attached to that recipe”.

“I just called her up and said that her Son and future Grandchildren would love to have some” Leslie said with a nonchalant shrug, “She seemed pretty happy to share”.

Ben picked up the spoon and took the first mouthful, it was glorious, his scratchy throat melted at the feeling of the hot soup. It tasted exactly like how he, his Mom and his grandparents used to make. Soothing and nourishing, it was just what he needed, plus the smell alone managed to bring his appetite back out of hiding.

It didn’t take him long to devour the entire bowl, Leslie sat and watched him eat with a gentle smile on her face, once finished she took the tray away and Ben leant back into the pillows feeling full and relaxed.

“Thank you” He said softly, “Seriously, for everything you’ve done in the past 24 hours, you’re amazing”.

Leslie leant down next to him, “It’s no trouble, I kind of like it when you get sick, in a weird way, I just like taking care of you”. 

Ben frowned, “Yeah but I should have been doing this for you instead, I feel awful that I’ve probably put you through a lot of stress, you don’t need this, the last thing I want is for you to hurt yourself or the babies because you’re worrying about me”. 

Leslie thought about it for a second, “You got the flu, it’s completely out of your control, you’ve spent the last four months making sure I’m taking all my vitamins and holding my hair back when my morning sickness turns into evening sickness. You’ve done so much for me, you’ve probably worked yourself so hard that you were just bound to get sick, but let me take care of you this week, we will have a relaxing week and it’s going to be filled with day time TV and cuddling…and waffles, you promised me waffles yesterday! You can’t deny a pregnant woman her waffles!”.

Ben laughed out loud and pulled Leslie into his chest, “Ok, I’ll get April to drop them round later, first things first you missed your nap time for today, I didn’t spend an hour of my life making that schedule for you to ignore it”.

A warm smile spread across Leslie’s face, “Ok fine, but as long as you nap with me”.

“I don’t want to make you sick”.

“Ben, I take so many vitamins, triple the regular amount for any regular pregnant woman, I don’t think the flu will stand a chance against us” She said as she rubbed her belly, “Let me take a nap with you, I missed you last night”.

Ben could feel his medication kicking in once again; it was probably time for him to take another wild dream ride too. “Alright” He agreed and the two snuggled down for an afternoon snooze.

This time around Ben’s dream was a lot less violent, it was still incredibly vivid, he was standing in this beautiful garden with flowers surrounding him. He thought he was alone in his peaceful haven until he felt something tug at his arm.

He looked down and saw a small blonde haired girl, she couldn’t have been older than six, she was looking back up Ben with chestnut coloured eyes and smiled. Warmth washed over Ben as if he’d known this young girl for her entire life. 

The two stayed like that for a long time, just looking at one another before the girl sprinted off away from him, chasing a butterfly in the field, Ben just watched this young girl playing and smiled to himself, he felt a ton of emotions that he couldn’t explain, he felt proud, happy…like a parent.

The sun was setting when Ben opened his eyes again, he turned to see Leslie folding laundry in the corner of the room, he sat up and took a glass of water from the side.

“Hey, look who’s up” Leslie said, “Those meds really knock you out, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone sleep that much”.

Ben’s mind was still absorbed in that dream he had, for some reason since he woke up he had a name stuck in his head, a girl’s name and every time he thought of that name the same little girl from his dream popped into his head, beaming at him.

Leslie saw Ben looking a little lost and walked over to him, “Are you ok? You’ve gone really pale again”.

“I’m just thinking” Ben said, he then turned to her “How would you feel if one of the triplets is a girl if we called her Sonia?”

Leslie blinked, they hadn’t really discussed names yet, they weren’t even sure what they were having yet as they wanted it to be a surprise.

“Sonia” Leslie repeated as she placed her hands over her stomach, “Sonia…”

“I just thought about it, I don’t want to sound crazy but I had a dream and-.”

“Yup” Leslie said as she looked back up at him with a smile, “I’m pretty sure there’s a Sonia in there”.

Ben smiled back at her and rested his hands on top of hers, “I think there is too”.

The two stayed like that for an hour or so, Ben had to admit despite the fact he was probably going to be out of action for a week or so, some good things did come from the Pawnee Flu, a beautiful name for their future daughter.


End file.
